My shoes, she told the woman. Give them to me.
When the driver returned she puffed halfway through a cigarette, flicking the ashes on the floor near the woman’s feet until the smoke made her high and she tossed the remainder out her window and turned toward the lady with a smug smile and said, Well? Don’t you think we should go? The dress made her feel charmless and witchy and chafed against her bare skin, her irritation countering the flutter of anxiety that began in her stomach, muscles clenching as the taxi turned the corner. Midway down the block the men, all three of them standing off the curb, their expressions equally hollow and punitive, glared back into the headlights. The taxi stopped and the men peered inside like carnivores hoping for a meal and Carla exhaled.
Then, according to plan, the Armenian lady was out on the street, huddled with Marko, taking care of business, the exchange inexplicably interrupted by Carla, impulsive and unscripted and adamant—she was Carla and Carla didn’t like this—demanding her share of the fee now, or she wasn’t going anywhere except home. The woman gaped at her impertinence and Davor furrowed his brow slightly but then smiled at Carla’s brazenness.
This is interesting, said the signori, his unctuous inflections of Italian almost like a parody of the language’s emotive power, and she realized he was being facetious. His air of refinement seemed like an ill-fitting mask worn over lowbrow oafishness. He cocked his oblong head, looking at Carla with mild curiosity, then spoke in Serbo-Croatian, questioning Marko, who questioned the Armenian woman in Italian, Carla breaking into the conversation to disagree over the amount, pressing her luck until the signori finally grasped the nature of the problem. Give to me, he said, this time in English, snapping his fingers for the woman to hand over the envelope she had received from Marko.
No one had bothered to openly suggest Carla’s actual value, which now impressed her as astronomical. She watched him remove eight American one-hundred-dollar bills from the envelope’s pocket, counting off four for her and four for the madam, but she stacked her hands on her hips and shook her head, crazily insisting that the agreement was sixty/forty in her favor. The signori’s mouth began to flatten with impatience, he was finding her feistiness irksome, Davor was sending her cautionary signals to back off, and she faltered, not able to purely connect with Carla’s next move, which proved to be the faltering itself.
Like Solomon, eh? the signori said, a shrewd gleam enlivening his eyes, expressing his sympathy for Carla’s position with an act of inspired meanness. He plucked a hundred-dollar bill back from the Armenian woman’s fist, tearing it down the middle, the halves split between the two females. On cue, Marko laughed at the signori’s cleverness. Davor struck the pose of a man bored by the contretemps of whores. Carla stuffed the money next to the passport in her clutch, elated with the success of her outrageous performance.
Now, please, he said, his hand extended, summoning her, clasping his hand atop hers to lead her to the car, his touch gummy and repellent but not in the least forceful and Carla smiled with compliance, the kara carsaf wafting medievally around her legs and arms, her high heels clicking on the pavement like a time bomb hidden beneath its tentlike folds. She said to herself, jeering with contempt, God hates your fucking guts, old man, the first time ever she had a hard look at the someone in her, of her, always there with her, who was heartless and sordid and probably wicked, an inscrutable self inhabiting a void.
(Stage Direction: Stay in control. Let him believe.)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The long black automobile seemed gangsterish and she thought it must be American-made although she knew little about different models. To her relief, the signori maintained a discreet distance between them in the backseat, his hands atop his knees, reminding her of a boy told to stay put, waiting for his name to be called. Along the boulevard north the streetlights popped and dissolved like heat lightning throughout the car’s interior and for the first few minutes no one spoke except Davor, who rasped directions in Serbo-Croatian to Marko, his muscled body grown testy and disgruntled behind the wheel, yanking the car from lane to lane in traffic that flashed everywhere like a school of mackerel in the nearby straits.
She stared directly in front of her at Davor’s crooked shoulders and the feathery back of his head, mesmerized by the broken elegance of his injuries, the morbid appeal of the mauled ear, the dangling arm, evidence of a spirit able to endure the most excruciating pain. Even so damaged, there was nothing weak or soft about him—in Ephesus he had exercised daily, sit-ups, knee bends, tremulous one-armed push-ups—and despite his easygoing nature, a cunning tension seeped out of his most casual gestures.
Some fantasies seemed accidental, unbidden—she certainly never asked for them—like imagining the signori dead, torn apart by lions, but she fantasized now about Davor as her grandfather and herself a child surrounded by the gentleness and humor with which he regarded everything, even things that were not gentle or humorous. He seemed the most romantic and honor-bound of men, sustaining a love beyond the grave through the implicit lifelong union of one exquisite kiss, strong love the provenance of strong people.
The signori struck a match and her mind came reeling back to the car, the drive, the men, the game, and what the game had become, a fiction turned inside out, like watching a movie starring you that wasn’t about you but there you were anyway. She glanced sideways to observe the signori in profile, a satanic flame flaring at the center of his face, the gnome transformed to gargoyle. The hand-rolled cigarette crackled and spit and seduced her nose with the aroma of burning rose oil. I like very much this, he said, exhaling in pidgin English, inhaling in baby-talk Italian, alternating bursts of rudimentary communication, Me, Tarzan. You, Jane, a stumbling fugue of language that might as well be played with drums and whistles.
You smoke, yes? he asked, extending a soft pawlike hand, the red eye of the ember jumping toward her face.
She was curious and held the drag in her lungs for several heartbeats, a warmth rippling through her body like the faint, out of reach beginnings of an orgasm that might never arrive without gigantic concentration, more potent than her father’s Afghani snuff or the lycée boys’ blend of cheap tobacco sprinkled with crumbs of hash.
I like mine better, she said, coughing out a tiny ghost of smoke, handing it back to him and tapping out one of her own from the pack in her clutch, tilting across the seat for a light, looking not at the cigarette and the match in his hand but at his face, filmy-eyed now and his full lips almost blubbery, his bemused countenance swollen by his own pleasure; his words, like his attempt at rakishness, muddled. Name is, of course, you are, Carla, yes? Young, beautiful. He landed a hand on her knee and she took it off and said, Wait.
Do I frighten you?
Of course not.
Say to me, he said dreamily. Tell me.
What?
You. You.
She heard herself talking, the neurotic pace of her sentences, reciting the things she had rehearsed and memorized and said without thinking, So now tell me about yourself, signori. Are you an important man? I think you are.
You think? he asked tonelessly. Why?
I don’t know, she said, and abruptly his hand was on her again, in her lap, a badger’s snout pressing between the clamped roots of her legs. The contact was not caressing but matter-of-fact and fairly pointless, target practice. She felt a zippery jolt from her loins to her breasts, an unwelcome sensation and not the least pleasurable. She slapped at his wrist, scolding him with the exaggerated indignation of a tease, until he withdrew.
That’s bad, she said, lowering her voice. Wait.
Yes, come on, he said, the mischievous twist of a smile rupturing his offended air. What for, wait? Give me your hand.
Wait, she shushed.
The hand, okay?
She didn’t know how to respond effectively to
his persistence but said, Say please, which made him snicker yet he said it and she let her right hand spider-crawl to the middle of the seat to be captured and drawn to his groin and for the first time then she felt disoriented and confused. His hand mashed down atop hers, scrubbing her palm against the detestable contrivance of his penis. Her impulse was to recoil but she kept on, held on, her puzzled fingers half-curled along the trousered shaft, beginning to recognize her body’s transformation, the cold sensation of submissiveness that led to numb endurance, imagining she actually knew something that she was sure she did not know, what it was to be inside the head of a prostitute. Like swimming in a race where your body became a machine, feeling both liberation and imprisonment at the same time.
This is so sick, she thought, trying to tug her hand away, the signori’s veneer of civility flaking off into aggression. Wait, be nice, she said sharply, loud enough to alert Davor, who rotated around and barked a rebuke at the signori, allowing her to retreat back across the seat into the gleaming nimbus of her dress, reprimanding herself for the failure of Carla’s attention, then satisfied by the contempt and disgust of Carla’s defense—This awful thing in his pants!
Yes, yes, okay, the signori told Davor, slumping just a little. No problem.
Wait, signori, Carla said, cooing in appeasement.
She looked out the window at the buildings, blocked and functional, clean-faced like barristers, and knew they were only minutes away from Maranian’s safehouse. Soon, she promised, her voice smooth and viscous and enticing—Carla’s voice, perfectly attuned to duplicity and deceit—and reached across to pat the hand of the signori, the light blanching his face to curry-colored wax molded into terrible straining immobility, the cunt-thirsty look that preceded devouring, the mind-lost expression of an imminence she had been able to defer or escape or negotiate in the past, a cock hovering, nuzzling, probing. For the remainder of the ride she stared ahead, all but her nose hidden in the recess of the kara carsaf, feeling the dark bloated pressure of his lust. She had only known nervous self-conscious boys, not men like this, nothing at all like her father, filthy bestial creatures preying on girls.
All right, she grudgingly corrected herself, girls for hire, twats like Carla.
(Stage Direction: Marko enters building to examine location for security risks. Marko returns. Davor and bodyguard remain with car. Carla accompanies signori to elevator and sixth-floor apartment above bank.)
In the final seconds before he disappeared from her life, Davor was a courtier, opening her door, gracious and noble in his bearing. He bowed his head in tacit allegiance, saying under his breath as she arose from the car that her grandmother would be very proud, fortifying gestures she absorbed in her blood with the deepest gratitude. By the assurance of his manner he had dignified her performance.
On the other side of the car, Marko held open the door for the signori, whose sulky mood changed as they crossed the street together, his hand fastened to her elbow, steadying his doped legs with a ruse of gallantry to compliment her ruse of subservience, somehow managing to radiate spry anticipation, a delightful secret about to be shared with his darling whorelet, as though he were taking her upstairs to show her a puppy. His face creased with merriment and carved the flaccid skin around his mouth and eyes into an impression of libertine benevolence. Inside the foyer, as they waited for the elevator, he offered her a cautious half-formed leer that was almost vulnerable and almost bashful, yet when the door opened she felt panic swoop and dive at her like a demented bird, the elevator no bigger than a shower stall. He stepped ahead into it and turned around, facing out, his back against the wall, and beckoned playfully for her to come along and she hesitated before jamming into the narrow space, coffinlike and claustrophobic, turning face out herself, her back spooned against his front as she inserted the access key for the top floor and the door rattled closed, the nasty thing in his pants poking her ass.
His breath batted at her covered ear like a moth and she smelled cumin threaded with disgusting wisps of something old-mannish and rotten. His hands snaked over opposite sides of her rib cage to seize her breasts and she closed her eyes and fought against her body’s skittishness, telling herself this was not a big deal, she was not an imbecile who could not foresee the scenes implied in her character’s role, she was not unwilling to go this far, an eight-hundred-dollar consolation—let him believe what he wanted because it would never matter.
Wait, okay? she said. One more minute. Let’s have a drink first. I’m thirsty.
You fuck how many?
Only you, signori, she said, uncoached, unscripted.
His damp liver-spotted hands went to her throat to pry at buttons at the same moment the elevator door opened onto the vestibule of the apartment and she twisted forward, buttons popping along her chest before his greedy fingers released the fabric. Ah, he said, triumphant, mocking her, gloating. Wait, eh? Scurrying into the soft lamplight of the front room, she sensed the clock of her masquerade ticking down, inwardly frantic to get her bearings in a space she had only experienced as a diagram—an antique Victorian sofa and two overstuffed wingback chairs, coffee table and breakfast table, an open door leading to a bedroom (stay out) and bathroom. A closet door. Another door, the important one, its bolt controlled by an electronic release with a remote trigger operated by her father. Behind this door at the rear of the building a short interior hall (Maranian’s position, her vigilant sentinel) leading to an exterior fire escape (her exit route). To her right, against the northside common wall shared by the neighboring building, was a wide, waist-high sideboard replete with liquor and highball tumblers, a silver ice bucket and pitcher of water, centered beneath a large mirror with an ornate gilded frame, a trick mirror, she had been told, the kind you could see through from behind. Her father was positioned on the other side in an abutting apartment—this, too, Maranian’s property—monitoring the entrapment, reinforced by the necessary authorities, her father had told her, never anticipating she would enter that room.
She heard the clop of the signori’s footsteps behind her and whirled around with a beguiling smile, flipping back the hood of her dress to shake out the incitement of her golden hair. She planted her hands on his shoulders to interrupt the momentum of his accelerating desire, then dropped them to play for time with an inspired faux-striptease meant not to provoke but stall, slowly unfastening the buttons remaining above her breasts, confident that only the signori could see what she was doing. It was exciting, a bit thrilling, really, persuading herself her decision meant her control, a conditional power to be carefully tested and exploited until the calvary arrived. She unhooked the butterfly clasp at the front of her bra, bending forward just enough, the signori hypnotized by her presentation. He allowed himself to be guided backward toward the sofa, starving vacant eyes drilled onto her breasts. He let her pull off his suit jacket (no concealed weapon, thank God) and loosen his drab necktie as she said, breathlessly, Signori, relax, we are here, sit down, let me get you something to drink, I want a drink. At the sofa she urged him down, shuddering when his lips brushed a jutting nipple as he sank onto the velvet cushion and she told herself it’s time, get out now, it’s time, time’s up, what the fuck are you doing? but he said Okay, very good, a vodka, and it seemed like the smart move, cross the room to fix him a drink to create a lulling distance between them, a safe unobstructed zone for her father and Maranian to bring down the curtain on this insane audition for a role exceedingly more radical than the one she had played to this point.
With resurgent modesty she clutched the top of her dress, closing the seam over her bare skin, and approached the side bar, her four-inch heels cracking echoes on the wood floor. She stole a glance at the door to her left, her body tensed in preparation for it to fly open any second now but it did not fly open and she stood at the side bar, peering at her supplicant reflection in the mirror, telepathically summoning her father, his face on the oth
er side of the glass, those ungodly inches of separation, Daddy! Get in here! and in frustration she let go of her dress and her breasts floated into view while she unscrewed the cap from the vodka.
Carla, said the wheezing signori, to fuck, which way you like? From behind, yes?
She shifted her eyes to his image in the mirror, a colorless salamander contemplating her body, his white dress shirt rolled out over the swell of his paunch and his hands fumbling beneath the tails. She shifted her eyes back to her own image so she would not have to look at him directly and then looked down to pour his drink. I like to be on top of the man, she said foolishly, knowing immediately that something in her voice had invited this, the scene she had been persuaded would never have a chance—stage direction deleted: an implausibly athletic explosive charge, the signori attacking like an enraged animal. She saw her face caught in the mirror, flat with disbelief, as she received a disabling two-fisted blow between her shoulder blades and collapsed across the surface of the side bar, glass shattering on the floor. In an instant the dress’s skirt was bunched above her hips, her panties a taut green span between her kicked-out ankles. He mounted her back with demonic strength, his body draped atop her torso like an old leopard, cords and tendons and sinew like animated iron cables beneath his age-loosened skin, her heartbeat lunging upward underneath him.
In a daze she registered a stabbing at her anus, then a searing nova of incandescent pain as the broomstick of his Soviet-made prosthesis ripped through the clenched ring of muscle into her rectum, sawing back and forth, lubricated now by her blood. She had stopped breathing and then when she started again her lungs expanded and emptied like bellows and each time she tried to press up and away he sank deeper into her and she felt a live coal stoked forward into her bowels.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover Page 47